A man could stand on the Eastham tablelands and, looking east or west, see salt water with hardly a leaf to block the view. Along the bay, from Eastham to Chequesset Neck, stretched a sad swath of land where the First Comers had found forest, where their descendants had grown grain, and where the topsoil now swirled with the wind. In Provincetown men had been cutting wood and grazing cattle for decades, and like Lilliputians loosing Gulliver’s bonds, they had freed the great dunes that now rolled across the landscape.
Mother Nature, it seemed, had turned against Cape Cod just as Mother England had turned against the merchants and shippers of Massachusetts.
That winter, the surveyor general of customs in North America requested renewal of the Writs of Assistance, enabling officers of the Crown to enter any premises and search for contraband without warrant. Given the growing debts from the French and Indian War, the Crown intended to prosecute the writs vigorously, especially against molasses smugglers.
For Ned, this was a minor discouragement. He always had his harpoon. For Serenity, it was something more, because the customs inspector for Barnstable was named Solomon Bigelow, and it was said that he kept spies.
ii.
“The
Serneriny’s
comin’ out,” said Scrooby Doone.
“The who?” said Leyden Doone.
“The
Serneriny
, what cousin Solomon wants us to watch.”
“It’s
Seren… Seren… Serentity
, you dumb fool.”
Scrooby Doone was a gangling youth with a prognathous jaw and an Adam’s apple that hopped about like a three-legged dog when he talked. Leyden Doone was stockier than his brother and dumber than most four-legged dogs. They had sprouted from a branch of the Bigelow family tree, just below the limb from which both of their parents had sprung. Cape Cod was still an isolated place, after all, and the grandchildren of Brewster Bigelow were not the
first
first cousins to marry and produce offspring of less than ministerial intelligence.
The Doones were the keepers of Jack’s Island. They raised cattle, cut marsh hay, and grew corn, which they fertilized from the herring-black streams of spring. Simple tasks for simple men. And because they were simple, Cousin Solomon had set them a higher task. If they performed it well, none would suspect them.
“We better follow her,” said Scrooby.
“To the Indies? Don’t know the way.” Leyden was leaning over the side of their catboat. He had dropped the sounding lead to gauge the depth, but in the time it took him to haul it in, he had forgotten what it said.
“She just goin’ into Rock Harbor, you dumb fool.”
“Smarter’n you.”
The
Serenity
tied up at Rock Harbor, unloaded nothing but a few pieces of paper, then ran up to Sesuit Harbor in Dennis and did the same. Then she made for Barnstable.
“Should we keep followin’ her?” asked Scrooby.
“Nobody smuggles pieces of paper. ’Sides, I’m hungry.”
So the Doones let the
Serenity
sail on and didn’t report to Solomon Bigelow that she had been delivering Serenity’s first broadside to the bay-shore towns.
WRITS OF ASSISTANCE are RUBBAGE
PEOPLE OF CAPE COD! I WRITE because I am a lover of TRUTH, which comes not from acceptance but from dispute. In thought will we formulate our argument. In argument will we learn the TRUTH. Tell me that the WRITS OF ASSISTANCE benefit the commonality and I will tell you that they are the VERIEST RUBBAGE.
With the KING HIMSELF will I argue, for I am determined to oppose with all the powers God gives me all writs of slavery and villainy, as these foul Writs of Assistance. King George says the rights of his people are dearer to him than the most valuable prerogatives of the CROWN. To that I say, DENY THOSE RIGHTS TO THE BRITONS OF AMERICA and we will choose to call ourselves AMERICANS!
While certain Barnstable attorneys and customs inspectors lick their chops to do the Crown’s work, the people must WHET their BLADES!
The Anonymous Outcast of Billingsgate
“Who is this bloody liar?” Solomon Bigelow slammed one of the broadsides onto the table in his brother’s office.
“Whoever he is, he speaks boldly.” Benjamin Bigelow thought he might know the Anonymous Outcast, but he had no intention of revealing his suspicions.
Benjamin was forty-three, a man of great substance in the community, great probity in business, great girth in the belly. Solomon was twenty-nine, tall, scrawny, and already going gray. The elder brother had inherited their father Ezekiel’s legal practice, the younger their grandfather Brewster’s impetuosity. Benjamin had been appalled to learn why Serenity Hilyard hated them. If Solomon learned that she had written the broadside, he might sail to Billingsgate and burn down her house.
Benjamin looked at Solomon’s reflection in the mahogany tabletop. “Whoever it is, he deserves not the least attention till he comes into the open and fights like a man.”
Solomon tore the broadside into pieces.
But there would be more, because Serenity had found a new weapon. Cape Cod had neither newspapers nor printing presses. To give an opinion, one stood before the tavern and declaimed it, spoke at town meetings, or lettered as many broadsides as writing cramp would permit and tacked them in places where they might be read. A woman shunned in public could find no better forum than the broadside, and Serenity’s pen soon poured forth vitriol against the writs. A mother whose son smuggled molasses could do no less.
iii.
A hearing was held on the writs in February 1761, in the council room of the Boston Town House. Arguing for the Crown was King’s Attorney Jeremiah Gridley. Speaking in opposition was James Otis, of an old Barnstable family, who had resigned as advocate general of the Admiralty Court in protest. All wore their finest white wigs, and the Boston
Gazette
told the story.
King’s Counsel Jeremiah Gridley defended the writs as a loyal subject. “I urge the court to uphold them. They are the legally justifiable means by which Customs Inspectors may bring to an end the outrageous and injurious trade that permits smugglers to circumvent payment of duties that should benefit every soul in the colony.”
But James Otis carried the day, beginning straight after dinner and concluding at six o’clock by the chime of the Old South bell. From exordium to peroration, his voice never faltered, the stentorian strength of it seeming to carry all the way to Cape Cod.
He began by proclaiming, “I am determined, to my DYING DAY, to oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand and villainy on the other as this Writ of Assistance is.”
He concluded with the audience wrapt in silence. “Let the consequences be what they will, I am determined to proceed and to the call of my country am ready to sacrifice estate, health, ease, applause, and even life. The patriot and hero will do ever thus. And if brought to the trial, it will then be known how far I can reduce to practice principles which I know to be founded in truth.”
On Billingsgate, Serenity Hilyard read the
Gazette
and heard not only an echo of her own words but the rumbling of a distant storm. If the former king’s advocate general turned against His Majesty, what might come next?
A few days later, the former king’s advocate general and his slave ran a sailboat onto Billingsgate Island. The man was dressed in a fine cloak and tricorn hat, and his stockings were as white as a gull’s belly. Under his arm, he carried a broadside.
Serenity was accommodating a toothache at the time. It was a common affliction, but she suffered more often than most. Some said it was because of her taste for raw sugar. Others blamed her bilious opinions. She still had front teeth, but one canine was gone, the other nothing more than a rotted stump. Mostly she ate cornmeal mush, chowder, beans cooked to pulp, and sugar melted on the tongue. When her jaw began to throb around a tooth, nothing but seawater and rum passed her lips. The cold seawater soothed the throbbing momentarily. The rum dulled the senses more generally.
This one was a molar, and unless Ned pulled it, her face would swell till the infection burst her skin and drained into the cloth tied around her jaw. Life could be misery.
The man knocked on her door. “Good afternoon, marm.”
“A damn sight gooder if you carry a vial of laudanum.”
He was in his mid-thirties. He had a round, full face that had seen little sun, powerful shoulders, but the delicate hands of a scholar. “I seek the Anonymous Outcast of Billingsgate.”
“Wouldn’t know him.” Serenity offered strangers suspicion and the sight of her blunderbuss before trust.
“Some on this Cape think they know her by name. I would talk with her.”
She squinted in the harsh sunlight. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Otis.” He tapped the broadside. “I would tell her that I borrowed the terms ‘slavery’ and ‘villainy’ to describe the writs. Unusual yoking of words, yet most apt.”
Serenity forgot her toothache. This formidable Cape Cod-der, written about in Boston papers, praised for his eloquence, a visionary, had come to flatter
her
. Ordinarily, those who praised her eloquence could not read or write, and those who flattered her other parts came less often as she aged. But he faced a test before she let him into the house. “What of the last paragraph? The one about Barnstable attorneys and customs inspectors?”
Otis smiled, revealing even, straight, tea-stained teeth. “I grew up in Barnstable. I know the Bigelows well. And I tell you, marm, I’d rather see the writs in the hands of the French.”
She flung open the door of Goody Daggett’s old shack and offered him tea spiked with rum.
“Whence came the molasses for the rum?” he asked wryly.
“The rum is a gift.” Ned stalked in the back door, and with no more greeting, picked up the bottle and splashed rum into Otis’s teacup. “ ’Tis impolite to refuse a gift.”
Otis lost neither calm nor wit, but raised his cup. “ ‘Deny those rights to the Britons of America and we will choose to call ourselves Americans.’ Heady sentiment. The time may come when others agree. And
they
will be called patriots.”
“I’m a woman who’s spent her life lookin’ at things from the outside, the bottom, and the back-end-to. I speak for them like me. If that makes me a patriot”—she touched her cup to his—“then, to patriotism.”
“A fool’s idea in a fool’s brain.” Ned took a swallow from the bottle.
Otis pointed to Ned’s sloop, the
Serenity
, tugging at her cable in Blackfish Bay. “With a writ of assistance, a royal agent can search your vessel, your house, your mother’s house, even your w-w-w-wife’s budge for molasses.”
“I’ve lived with the writs. I see no need for broadsides about ’em. And you’ll speak no more of my wife.”
“This here’s an important man, Ned,” said Serenity. “Treat him like one.”
“I treat him like any man.”
“But will the Crown treat you like an
English
man?” asked Otis. “With the writs, a customs inspector needs no more than your bad reputation to search your house.”
“He may need no more than the broadsides of the Anonymous Outcast.” Ned drained the bottle and headed for the door. “I say stretch your neck for no man.”
“I’d rather stretch my n-n-n-neck than have it wrung,” shouted Otis, with sudden violence.
It was said that he was given to strange fits and strange deeds, stutterings and inappropriate obscenities, sudden sea changes of temperament that passed as quickly as they arose. Who but an impulsive man would sail half the day to speak with an anonymous outcast, thought Serenity, when there was so much more of consequence to be done?
Otis tugged at his waistcoat, then tugged again, as though his anger twitched outward to every finger. Then he was calm and smiling. “Miz Hilyard, you stretch your neck, and I’ll stretch mine, or we’ll
all
swing in the wind of the king’s farts. That’s what I’ve come here to say.”
iv.
As the currents of Cape Cod Bay had built Billingsgate Island, the currents of history would build the sandbar that Otis began in the Writs of Assistance speech. As he railed in Boston against the Acts of Trade, the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act and wrote
The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved
, Serenity stirred the waters of Cape Cod with her broadsides and found that the colonies were full of rebellious outsiders like her. As Boston mobs hanged tax collectors in effigy and destroyed the homes of rich royal officials, Serenity urged them on. “It is HIGH TIME,” she wrote, “that the rich families learn that every man can rise as high as they, no matter how lowly his birth.”
And none of this pleased Black Bellamy’s bastard. He knew that Bigelow kept spies, and one day, Bigelow would come after him. Then there would be trouble, whether he carried contraband or not. So he went back to whaling and left the smuggling to those whose mothers were not so fiery. After all, he was now a man of responsibility.
Samuel Edward Hilyard was born in 1763. He sucked at his mother’s breast while she lettered broadsides. He learned his first words as his grandmother dictated them. He took his first steps behind a father who stomped out whenever the women began their troublemaking work.
In June of 1768, word arrived that two regiments of British troops were on their way to Boston to support the latest round of taxes, called the Townshend Acts. This time Boston mobs would be kept in check, and resisters would be shipped to England for trial.
In the General Court, James Otis cried, “Let Great Britain rescind: if she does not, the colonies are lost to her forever.”
And on Billingsgate Island, the little boy once more smelled ink and heard the scritch-scratch-scritch of quills upon parchment.
“Outside on such a cold day as this?”
A shadow loomed over the sand hill where the boy played. When he tried to conjure his father during his absences, he saw the whales’-tooth necklace before anything else. He reached out and touched the white bone. “Did you kill many whales?”